Love, In Paris

Monday evening after dinner,
I crept down to my grandparent’s
basement and shuffled
their stuff around until I found
their collection of slides. The projector
was already set up on a card table
in front of the blank cement wall.
No one was around so I decided
it was okay if I had a look.

It did not occur to me that any
of them might be pornographic.
They weren’t. Mostly, it was pictures
of my grandmother in her then-liberal
dresses, my grandfather in his fedora
squeezing her hand tightly. I did not linger
on any of them very long, except
for the one of them in Paris.

I was kind of embarrassed for them:
kissing in front of the Eifel Tower.
It was so cliché. If they’d known
I was doing the equivalent of Facebook
stalking them, I’d’ve gone upstairs
and slapped them for taking such a ridiculous
photograph.

And then I decided it didn’t matter:
if someone loved me as much
as they loved each other in that moment,
I’d’ve taken an even stupider picture
and not given one single damn.